


Hope and Coffee

by orphan_account



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tendo runs on hope and coffee. A character study of what he hides behind all that sass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope and Coffee

Tendo runs on hope and coffee, and on the good days it’s all hope.  
I mean, earth in mortal peril from alien hellbeasts, worldwide panic, yeah yeah yeah, but it’s not so bad when you’re sitting in the LOCCENT command chair with an entire Shatterdome behind you. Beautiful things, Shatterdomes, living monuments to human bravery and derring-do, and Tendo is proud to be a brave and daring doer, proud to be the keystone that holds the ‘Dome together. Oh, sure, Stacker Pentecost is the Marshal and a great one, and he gives the orders and finds the Rangers and is just generally An Inspiration. And that’s important, but Marshal is a big picture kinda job, and somebody has to keep track of who’s working what shift this week, and when the food trucks are coming, and whether anyone has dealt with the toilets in the third floor men’s. He’s a glorified secretary and he knows it, but brother, when you’re saving the world there’s glory to spare. He is lord of the unsung heroes and he loves it, because you don’t need a Jaeger to feel three hundred feet tall when you’ve got a whole Shatterdome at your beck and call.  
They come in beaten down and he fixes them up, polishes them to new with the help of the best team in the world, he runs marathons all across the Shatterdome and all that’s left is for the Rangers to step in and deliver the final punch. He loves his job fiercely, or as fiercely as you can love something on four hours of sleep a night, but what can you do when the whole world is relying on you. He lives restless sleepless burning with caffeine and an inner fire like the reactor in a Jaeger. He’s high on heroics, his and the Rangers’ and that of the thousand unknown techs who hold the whole thing together. He wants to win, of course he does, but also he never wants this to end, never wants to stop being the organizational juggernaut with the clipboard and the bowtie. He gets things done in style all right, but mostly he gets things done, and when it’s over he doesn’t know what he’s going to get done next.

***

Helplessness isn’t really Tendo’s deal. If you feel helpless, that means there’s a problem. If there’s a problem, you do something. If that doesn’t work, you do something else. It’s that simple. And when there’s nothing left to do, you trust in God and let Him do what He can, and you don’t call it failure and you don’t call it giving up. You don’t. But he keeps losing, losing the pilots who he relies on for that final step, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can take it.  
He’s been thinking about San Francisco too much lately, thinking about the sloshing of the waves, the dull roar of the ferry engine, the same as it was every day up until Trespasser arrived, tearing his life into as many pieces as the Golden Gate Bridge. Noise, wreckage, confusion, running to save his grandfather only to watch him die. He tries to keep himself distracted, fill his ears with the white noise of busywork and bureaucracy, but he’s woken up gasping too many times to feel secure anymore.  
But he’ll keep fighting. As long as there are Kaiju and Jaegers left, he’ll do anything for the Jaegers that he can.  
And then there they are, him and Herc and Stacker, listening to a bunch of lunatic stuffed shirts telling them that’s it, it’s over, good game everyone now go home and die quietly. Oh, not in so many words, of course, but. He wants to scream at them, bang on the screen and yell the sense back into them so he can go on saving the world. But there you have Marshall Pentecost and Ranger Hansen standing strong and so he has to be Mr. Choi and not yell and not cry, and besides there are still things to be packed because there’s not going to be any money for spare parts anymore, there’s not going to be any money at all.  
Tendo runs on hope and coffee, and these days it’s mostly coffee.


End file.
